Philippine Political Science Journal 117

America’s Informal Empires: Philippines and Japan, edited by Kiichi Fujiwara and Yoshiko Nagano, Manila, Anvil Publishing, 2012, 354 pp., ISBN 978-971-27-2765-8

In recent times, very few books may be deemed to be important to both fields of Philippine and Japanese studies. For its declared comparative perspective, this book is one of them. Indeed, the comparability of the Philippines and Japan cannot be ignored: both fought wars with the US; both saw defeat; both became grounds for “democratic” experiments in governance; both became client states with collaborating conservative elites, and both became (and continue to exist as) geopolitical nodes in the US network of military bases and arrangements propping up a particularly US-centered world order (via the Mutual Defense Treaty in the Philippines and the US-Japan Security Treaty in Japan). No other polity in Asia has received as much influence from the US compared to these two. Alas, Japanese scholars often compare aspects of their political system with those of Europe, and the Philippines with those of either Asia or Latin America. This book promises to give some redress to this vacuum in knowledge production. Kiichi Fujiwara’s introductory chapter starts with a discussion of the practice of the geopolitical game of colonialism by two so-called “latecomers”: the US and Japan. Beyond this common point defined by time, the two powers significantly differed in their strategies of empire. As Fujiwara notes, Japan went the way of territorial expansion appealing to notions of “common culture (dobun) and nationality (doshu)” which are essential elements of the strategy of “pan-nationalism”, (11) while the US opted for what may be interpreted as indirect rule via the so-called “liberal and informal empire” (12). Japanese defeat in World War II saw the end of its empire, placing it and the Philippines, as Fujiwara eloquently states, “under the liberal and informal empire that the Americans have created and sustained” (12). Although the “informality” of America’s post-war (or cold war) empire is deemed to be acceptable by this reviewer, its “liberality” is most certainly not. The numerous dictatorships and authoritarian regimes propped up by America during the Cold War era is a testament to the opposite of this so-called liberality. But then again, the actions of America’s fiercest Cold War allies in Asia are perhaps not the main concerns of this book. This is most unfortunate, for the workings of the “informal empire” are perhaps best observed in the post-war/cold war period actions of the client states tied to America’s economic might and protected by her defense umbrella. Be that as it may, Fujiwara urges for more comparative studies between the Philippines and Japan to be done. This urging is followed by some of the authors in this tome. Reading Temario Rivera’s chapter, one could not help coming to the conclusion that the US did a wonderful job in Japan while bungling its post-war presence in the Philippines. The US, through General Douglas MacArthur as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP), was able, among many other things, to abolish the punitive surveillance mechanism of the Japanese Imperial state via the de-establishment of the Home Ministry, to purge the ranks of the government through a ban of those involved in the wartime regime, to institute land reform and to establish a “Peace Constitution”. In the Philippines, again among many other things, the US managed to thwart justice by absolving those who collaborated with the Japanese, to re-establish the oligarchy via the “granting” of independence (members of this oligarchy are quite infamous for their legislation of back pay right after the war), and to impose “parity rights” for American economic interests in the Philippines via the Bell Trade Act. More significantly, American complicity, it appears, led to the curtailment of the development of a legal left-wing progressive movement in the Philippines. Rivera thoroughly explains this through a brief 118 Book Reviews discussion of the Hukbalahap experience of hostility with the returning American forces and the Democratic Alliance’s disqualification in the post-war elections for the House of Representatives. Rivera’s chapter illustrates most persuasively why Socialists and Communists “have had a continuing political presence both in the Diet and the daily political discourses of political life” (74) in Japan while, in comparison, their presence is to say the least, still marginalized in Philippine political life. Another chapter that pursues comparison is that of Yoshiko Nagano, which examines American and local-elite complicity in (re)creating national symbols. In the Philippines, the American authorities through the public school system and the official rituals of the colonial state successfully transformed the image of Rizal from a “martyr of the Filipino nation” to a “mere reformist” (144). In Japan, MacArthur’s General Headquarters/SCAP presided through an equally impressive transformation of the Japanese Emperor from being “sacred and inviolable” (from the Meiji Constitution) to a “symbol of the unity of the Japanese people” (from Japan’s 1947 Constitution). Nagano views this “SCAPanese” or “hybrid Japanese-American model” as a tool for stabilizing occupation policies in Japan as “a kind of replica of United States pacification policy in the Philippines” (138). In this vein, America has bestowed upon both the Philippines and Japan benign and inscrutable national exemplars... symbols that are readily useful for immediate and long-term political pursuits. The difference, as scholars of Philippine and Japanese studies very well know, is that Rizal was executed by the Spanish colonial government, making him a truly silenced martyr of the Filipino revolution, while Emperor Hirohito, posthumously known as the Showa Tenno, lived on until 1989, a figure who was decidedly silent about his war responsibilities, absolved like the Filipino collaborators by the “moral” power of the victor that is America. Indeed, at the end of the day, constitutionally straight-jacketed symbols like Sanrio products do not apologize. Nagano’s academic exercise serves to remind a new generation of Filipino and Japanese scholars to be wary or to be critical of “worship” whether it comes in the form of a venerable emperor or martyred hero. Asking the questions about “Whose interests are being served?” and “What revelations are being suppressed?” by these still-existing processes is still worth our while. Four other scholars take the arduous yet rewarding track of comparison in this tome. Emphasizing the dynamism and fluidity of culture in the appropriation of artifacts, Michiyo Yoneno-Reyes examines how American music has influenced the Japanese tradition of creating sambika, shoka and gunka (Christian hymns, school and military songs) as well as the ubiquitous Cordilleran identity-marker, that is, the salidummay songs. Analyzing intermarriages and how “something “American” enters the lives of these women and men” (261), Nobue Suzuki skilfully portrays how “hybrid” and “amphibious” identities may be observed. One identity, that of Japanese men in terms of economic might, is seen as “not-white, not-quite yet alike” (266) and another identity, that of Filipina women in terms of the “global-national-linguistic hierarchy” is similarly seen as “not- white yet quite alike ’Westerners’” (273). Hiromu Shimizu illustrates how “the vestiges, damages, and influences of American colonization/occupation and continuous domina- tion” (305) permeate the lives of four individuals (including that of the author) whose consciousness of it facilitates the refiguring of identities. Finally, using the social psychological concepts of mourning and melancholia, Satoshi Nakano compares Philippine popular movements such as the 1931 Tayug Colorum and the 1967 Lapian Malaya uprisings with the phenomenon of the 1967 Kagoshima mission for bone gathering as “revolts of living memories” (162). Other excellent (though not strictly comparative) works in this volume are those of Julian Go, Reynaldo C. Ileto, Oscar V. Campomanes, Floro C. Quibuyen, Patricia Afable and Agusto Espiritu.